Back when I was living in Columbus, Ohio my friends and I started a quote wall. Whenever a bit of brilliance (or otherwise) poured out of someone’s mouth, somebody would yell “Quote!” thus nominating it for Quote Board status. The quote then had to be seconded by someone (it almost always was), and then it would be written down to be forever immortalized on the Quote Board.

This is the modern day equivalent of that classic piece of my past.

QUOTE BOARD:

DMV Customer: “Do you have the motorcycle handbook?”

DMV Employee: “We only have it in Spanish; we’re out of the English ones.”

DMV Customer: “Ummm… okay. Do you have a Spanish translator I could borrow?”

I would have posted this last night, but the experience of yesterday as a whole made me just want to go to bed and start over from scratch.

Yesterday started off normal enough: breakfast, news, emails, work, etc. But Kathy and I had a 3PM appointment at the DMV here in California to get new licenses, car registration and plates, so she picked me up around 2PM and we headed over to the Culver City branch.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but when I heard the word “appointment,” I assumed that meant we had a scheduled time to walk in and be helped.

I, however, was wrong.

In Californese, “appointment” means “walk on in and grab a number like every other asshole here.”

You know, I could write a long rant about how fucked the DMV is, but would I really be saying anything new? Just know this: the DMV is the same everywhere. It sucked in Ohio, it sucked in Wisconsin, and it sucks in California.

The only difference is that Los Angeles has four million people living in it, so the suck factor is slightly amplified because of the sheer number of people who are waiting to get bent over by the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I’ll sum up our experience with this, a photo Kathy took of me with her phone while we were sitting there waiting:

Yeah... this says it all.

So what does one do to wash the slime of the DMV experience from their flesh? They drink!

Kathy and I were going to get Chinese, but we have been watching cash lately and didn’t want to spend money on food when we could spend it on booze instead. And besides, we don’t even know if the Chinese restaurant by our apartment, Twin Dragon, has booze.

So, playing it both cheap and safe, we decided to dig through a few gift certificates we had laying around. Luckily, we came across $20 in TGI Friday’s gift certificates and, after a quick Google search, realized that there was a TGIF just down La Cienega.

But this wasn’t just ANY TGI Friday’s, my friends. No, this TGIF was owned by a celebrity. Or kind of a celebrity, at least.

I’ll give you a hint. He is most famous for two things: playing basketball and having HIV.

No, not Freddie Mercury. The TGIF we went to was owned by Magic Johnson!

Christ, I wish I had brought along my camera.

First, it was fucking PACKED. Like, they had security both outside and inside! There was a wait! There were packs of people milling about outside like hungry savages just waiting for a table! And it was a Wednesday night! At a TGI Friday’s!

I don’t give a shit who owns a TGI Friday’s. It could be Jesus’ TGI Friday’s for all I give a shit, there’s no way I’d wait for a table at a TGIF. So, needless to say, we sat in the bar area.

We ordered some beer and took in all of the Magic Johnson-ness of the place. And then my bowels struck. I had to go to the bathroom, and quick.

I ran to the Magic Johnson bathroom and sat on the Magic Johnson toilet seat after building a nest with those Magic Johnson toilet seat liners they have on the wall.

While sitting there doing my dirty, I noticed a drainage hole in the floor next to my feet. These are usually used when they hose down the place at the end of the night, so all of the disease and funk and crud just goes right down the drain.

I quickly gave the bathroom a courtesy flush… AND THE DRAINAGE HOLE STARTED TO SPIT WATER OUT OF IT, ALL OVER THE PLACE!

At first I was like, “Whoa. Flushing the toilet makes water bubble up out of that thing.”

I flushed again to test my hypothesis and, as you’d expect, it once again bubbled all over the place!

That’s when it hit me: “WHOA! FLUSHING THE TOILET MAKES WATER BUBBLE UP OUT OF THAT THING!”

Totally mortified, I finished up and flushed the toilet with my shoe while standing as far away from the drainage hole as possible. A quick hand/arm/neck/face wash with bleach later, I was out the door.

We drank beer. We split appetizers. We got the bill.

After our $20 was taken out, our bill was only $10. Not bad. But we had to tip $6, so the night STILL ended up costing us $16.

Probably just should have gotten Chinese. I hear the Twin Dragon by us is owned by Larry Bird.